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Monday, November 11, 2013

Baby Book Bees

When I first came to my library they were already offering a fabulous 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten initiative. The name literally says it all. Basically, you encourage parents to read 1,000 books with their kids before kindergarten. This is a great initiative and the families in our area have responded very enthusiastically, but I felt like something was missing.

Our 1,000 Books program is marketed for children between the ages of 1-5. What about the babies under one? I've found that parents of infants are constantly looking for things to do. There are very few things for infants here, especially things that don't cost money. How could we better serve this population? The answer was Baby Book Bees.

Going off the model of 1,000 Books B4K, I decided to make it an initiative to get parents to read 100 books to their children before they turn one. Almost identical to our new 1,000 Books sheets, I made half-sheets for our parents with 25 shapes to fill in. On the back of each sheet there are four early literacy tips.

When a parent signs up, they are given a lovely yellow folder with information about the initiative, their first shape sheet, and a bib celebrating their enrollment.

Once the parent has read 25 books they come back and visit us. We make a huge fuss at the desk with lots of clapping, and then we give them stickers and a new sheet. They put their sticker on our 1000 Book Garden Wall on a matching bee.

Once they hit 100 books they get their own board book to keep. Plus, they are given a 100 book head-start on 1,000 Books B4K.

This is a wonderful program on so many levels. First, it creates at least 4 library visits by new parents. They are beginning to establish the tradition of coming to the library on a regular basis. It also is giving parents a powerful message of how important reading is to a child at any age. Plus, once the groundwork is laid for the program, it is not staff intensive at all!

To get the word out about this new initiative we decided to partner with the two local hospitals. Both hospitals give out a packet of information to each new mom during their hospital stay. We were able to get a half-sheet of information in these packets. They also agreed to put up posters in various offices that are visited frequently by new moms and in waiting rooms.

We decided we wanted to start with enough material for 200 participants and bought accordingly. We predicted we would get about 100 people enrolled within our first year. We officially launched a month ago and we have 28 people signed up! There was clearly a need for this in our community and we are overwhelmed with the great responses we've had from both parents and community members.

I applied for a Target Early Childhood Reading grant to get the initial funds. We were lucky enough to get chosen. If you have not looked at the grants before, please go visit. The grants are entirely online and the Target tech team is very helpful if you run into any glitches.

Are you offering anything for under ones? If not, you should consider Baby Book Bees!

Hey Brooke. We (hopefully) will be getting a grant coming our way and 1000B4K would be a great plan for the grant. I like the idea that your library has 1000B4K for 1-5 since they receive the most fun from it (babies prolly wouldn't get it. Prolly.). So, if a participant finishes 100 books before they turn 1, can they graduate into the next program?

Ya for grants! Once they finish 100 books we go ahead and sign them up for 1,000 books and give them a 100 book head start. But they don't get their folder and officially start the program till they are 1. Once the baby is one they come back and we give them their sign up gift (a tote bag).

I love everything about this! I've been wanted to start a program with our local hospital providing new parents with a little care package with early literacy tips, info about baby storytimes, signing up for a library card, etc. -- Something like this would be perfect to include! Well done :)

Thank you! I think partnering with the hospital has definitely helped us reach a new audience. We've found that a lot of new parents are just trying to find a welcoming space, and this is a great way to get them in the door.

I absolutely LOVE this idea! So awesome that you were granted funds to support this effort! I would like to share this site with you to pass along to parents. It addresses ways to begin a life long love for reading and turn it into a family tradition beginning from the moment of pregnancy. Hope you enjoy it!http://www.babysbooksandbubblesohmy.blogspot.com

Borrow away!!! We have started working with our preschools and daycares in our community to partner with us for this program. Please feel free to contact me if you need any additional information or have any questions. My email is berache at gmail . com

"We've found that a lot of new parents are just trying to find a welcoming space, and this is a great way to get them in the door." This statement is sooooo true. Having a baby can feel isolating - at least that was my experience when I had my twins almost 14 years ago. Library programs opened up opportunities for meeting other parents and developing new friendships. I love the idea of your Baby Bees program and would have enjoyed participating with my daughters had something like this been available at the time.

Is this program still up and running? How successful has it been for you and the families involved?

One of our library system's key initiatives is early literacy; this program would be a great way to help in achieving the goals set forth in the current strategic plan.

The program is still going strong. Sign up has been slower than anticipated for sure, but we've found that we have a pretty good completion rate. We currently have 125 babies signed up and 48 of them have finished.

We've received a lot of positive feedback about this program, and we've noticed that if our caregivers participate in this program successfully they generally become frequent library users past the babies first birthday and are excited for the 1,000 Books Before Kindergarten program.

The best thing about this project is that once all of the initial planning went into it we haven't had to revisit it again. It has been completely passive. We'll probably give it another year before looking at revamping the program to grab the attention of new visitors :)

Hi Brooke, We do 1000 books here and I would love to apply for a grant to get started with a program for babies as you described. I just wanted to make sure you don't mind if we use your ideas, designs, etc. Are there any restrictions on what we may use and how we can credit you if we may implement the program? Thanks! Christie